It is well known that traditional advertising media such as newspapers, public radio and television has suffered a dramatic decrease in popularity and advertising effectiveness with the advent of the internet and mobile phone technology. Advertisers, therefore, are highly motivated to identify new methods of distributing advertisements in order to create effective brand awareness. As newer technologies such as mobile phones evolve into highly sophisticated two-way communication systems, such technologies can be leveraged to provide trackable advertising impressions and brand awareness by directly displaying advertisements and testimonials to potential customers.
Today, consumers can control which advertisements reach them more effectively than in the past. For example, newer technologies like digital video recorders (DVRs) allow users to skip undesirable advertisements. Similarly satellite radio allows users to listen to music without commercials.
With the declining ability to offer advertisements through traditional broadcast advertising media, this invention provides an advertising system that offers frequent and effective advertising to targeted audiences.
This invention also provides a system in which recipients view personally endorsed advertisements by known contacts to increase the acceptance of the advertisement and to link to personalized testimonials of the advertisement for distribution to the existing personal contacts.
This invention provides the ability to generate, transmit, validate and track usage of electronic offers and award subsidies and value to subscribers and recipients.
Other advantages and aspects of the invention will become apparent upon reading the following disclosure.